Goose Creek Symphony: The Same Thing Again

By: Dennis Cook

A slice of heaven that’s been collecting dust since the ’70s, The Same Thing Again (Bo Records) proves that cosmic country-rock innovators Goose Creek Symphony pulled up stakes one album too early. Originally set to be their follow-up to 1974’s Do Your Own Thing But Don’t Touch Mine, these sessions lay dormant in the wake of the band’s dissolution in the ’70s until rediscovered on a cassette tape recently by the revived Symphony, who reformed in 1990. Though given less weight than The Byrds and Gram Parsons, if given credit at all, Goose Creek were on the frontlines of rock boys slicing & dicing Hank Williams, Merle Haggard and more into a soup also flavored by jazz, hippie fusion, Sun Studios spice and Tejano pop. One day someone is gonna tell their tale (perhaps here on your JamBase if we’re lucky…) but in the meantime, this new-old salvo should make you take lil’ spin a red brick floor.

In a recent conversation with main Goose Charlie Gearheart, he told me that they wanted opener “Tulsa Turnaround” to sound stoned and it truly does. This liquid stumble claims “Best Version Ever” away from Kenny Rogers & The First Edition, and hints at the sweet country-rock that follows. While a touch less eclectic than GCS classics like Established 1970 and Words of Earnest, this one had serious commercial potential, especially in the still relatively accepting atmosphere of FM radio in 1974-75. If folks like Charlie Daniels, initially a ’60s session fiddler both influenced and aided by Goose Creek in his early days, could score hits with his new breed of populist country then a tongue-in-cheek nibbler like “Hard On Wives” and slippery fun “Just Another Rock & Roll Song” might have found a home in the hearts of program directors and DJs coast-to-coast.

While always possessed of a certain twang – a pastoral soul, if you will – Goose Creek Symphony dip into core musical ideas, folk-like nuggets that seem like something a hosen wearing lute player might have brought to town in days of yore. Here, it’s “Cindy” and “Sailors” that feel old time despite being written by long haired stoners during Gerald Ford’s tenure in the White House. Throw in a pretty love song like “Mary,” a superb jumper like “Too Much Of A Good Thing” and a DVD that shows the band in action during this period and you’ve got a pretty swell introduction to one of the unsung heroes in the lineage of what we now call Americana. Let’s do what we can not to miss them a second time around, okay, kids?

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